Quarterly Journal of Ideology - lsus.edu and Services/CommunityOutreach...Volume 32, 2009, 1& 2...

Quarterly Journal of IdeologyVolume 32, 2009, 1& 2

QQQuuuaaarrrttteeerrrlllyyy JJJooouuurrrnnnaaalll ooofff IIIdddeeeooolllooogggyyy A Critique of Conventional Wisdom

An electronic journal at: www.lsus.edu/la/journals/ideology

The Homo Mediaticus and the Paralysis of Critical Thought

Massimo Ragnedda*

After the end of Nazism and fascism and with the fall of the Soviet block, our society has been

partly founded on the myth of the freedom of the press and the freedom of thought. Fear of an

Orwellian society causes us to reject and oppose any imposition that comes from high up. The

human loves to feel free to think, to act with full autonomy, completely emancipated from external

influences. Paradoxically, now, never has the homologation in behaviour and in the ideas of

individuals been so apparent, manifesting in the ways in which we dress, eat, and in our desires and

aspiration, but, above all, there is homologation in the way we think.

The totalitarian regimes could not impose thoughts by force. In contrast, such regimes are

sources of critical thought. In an obvious absence freedom of expression, the human reacts, almost

instinctively, with cognitive force, developing “critical thought” to reject the “System”; in other

words, facing a coercively created homologation, the human answers with nonconformist critical

thought. Paradoxically, today, it seems that with the freedom to express one’s own opinions, the

human does not develop critical thought. There exists an “abstract force” which imposes its own

laws and advances its supremacy on politics: the market. This has happened primarily because of

what the Frankfurt scholars call “the culture industry”;1 a critical analysis of the economic and

cultural context in which we live shows the risks derived from a serialized production of cultural

products and commercialisation of art. As Debord shows, the risk of a paralysis of critical thought

comes from the “society of the spectacle.”2


This article is divided into three parts. The first part will examine the illusion of pluralism, where

in spite of a plurality of media, the ideas diffused are similar; they are different only in appearance

and not in reality. Furthermore, this part will investigate which “eyeglasses” we use in

understanding, deciphering, and elaborating the input that comes from the media system and the

real world.3 Autonomy of thought is in trouble and the ability to think critically has atrophied as a

result of the media system. As Postman outlines “when a population becomes distracted by trivia,

when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public

conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their

public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear

possibility”4. Since the advent of television there has evolved a new subject: homo videns.5 This

new subject is progressively losing its critical abilities.

The second part of this article analyzes the role of the advertising world, which imposes the

immediate attainment of happiness as a categorical imperative of our age. The mass media, part

involuntarily and part intentionally, has become an agent reinforcing the status quo, creating

privileges and advantages for the power elite.

The last paragraph of the article will try to show the irrationality of our system, using the Adorno

and Horkheimer analysis which states that, at the apex of its development, the rationalism of

Enlightenment is inverted and becomes irrationality.

Let us start with some general considerations. Democratic societies are characterized by free

elections. Indeed, their absence suggests the presence of a regime. This is an obvious truth even to

those who have become accustomed to think for only “five minutes per day”. Another truth: the

person who wins the election must submit to the laws of the market and to international institutions

that impose their prescriptions upon every single State. If we see the ‘five minutes’ metaphor as the

limit beyond which critical thought occurs, we could deduce that only those who possess and use

critical thought understand the true substance of things and not only their appearance. More

strongly, those who are accustomed to think in a dogmatic way based on the ephemeral will not see


the risks for the democracy of an increasingly conformist society, enslaved to the market. At the

same time, those who think critically see the dangerousness and the contradictions of this society

but seem unable to communicate them as in Plato’s “myth of the cave”. Here emerges the

responsibility of the intellectual, which many authors have emphasized in different ways: Gramsci6;

Mills 7 ; Gouldner 8 ; Brym 9 ; Szelenyi 10 ; Konrad and Szelenyi 11 ; Bourdieu 12 ; Bourdieu and

Wacquant13; Bauman14.

Furthermore, the freedom to dissent is guaranteed in democratic societies. However,

provocatively, we could ask: is it possible to dissent on something with which we have no

acquaintance and of which we have no awareness? If the media invite us to reflect solely on

ephemeral and superficial things, those who follow only this news, even if remaining free to dissent,

will use this faculty in order to criticize the ephemeral, the scraps, but not the “substance”. It is

necessary to reflect on this point. To dissent to the things disseminated by the media is to be in

discord with the appearance of these things, but not with their essence. The discussion of the

difference between appearance and essence is not new. Marx notes a dyscrasia between truth and

appearance. Appearance is not just a trick or optical illusion, it is much more: it is a representation

contrary to the substance of the thing in question, suggesting freedom where instead slavery reigns

and free exchanges where coercion exists spreading and shaping the exchanges.

Today, in the society of the spectacular and ephemeral, the ‘myth of the cave’ is still a pertinent

issue. Everything seems to be controlled from the top, but although the system works to deceive us

with the concept of pluralism (political, cultural, ethnographic), the subject it is in some way free to

choose. In order to understand one needs to stop for more then five minutes to reflect. What we see

is that the most important decisions in our daily lives have come from a small minority, not

democratically elected which guards its own interests. The minority, in order to safeguard the

advantages derived from the privileged positions it has obtained using mass media, on one hand

exalt the virtues of the market and on the other try to deceive us of our continually increasing

freedom. All of this would be obvious if we stopped a moment to reflect with critical thought.


Abilities and wishes are two concepts on which it is necessary to reflect. One is not able to think

when one is not trained to do so. We should ask ourselves: who trains us to think? The answer is

simple: the school at the beginning and the university at the end. They ought primarily to teach us to

think, to supply the critical elements of thought, to elaborate and to cultivate the most precious

legacy of the Enlightenment: the critical use of reason. Instead the educational institution is moving

in another direction. Reforms push schools towards an ever greater professionalization. They

cultivate the homo faber in contrast to the Homo sapiens, they emphasize practical and not critical

abilities. In a society where the market, the economy and productivity propagandize in a cross-

sectional way, advancing their supremacy on politics and values, the homo criticus is not only

superfluous but indeed, in some cases, harmful. The school as an institution, once the most

important agent of socialization and education, has given way to the media and in particular to

television. It is television that educates and transmits values. As Postman states, the television as the

alphabet or the printing press,

Has by its power to control the time, attention and cognitive habits of our youth

gained the power to control their education. This is why I think it accurate to call

television a curriculum. As I understand the word, a curriculum is a specially

constructed information system whose purpose is to influence, teach, train or cultivate

the mind and character of youth. Television, of course, does exactly that, and does it

relentlessly. In so doing, it competes successfully with the school curriculum.15

Television is therefore in competition with the school educational system for cultural and value

formation. 16 More than this, it is also in competition with the other fundamental educational

institution, that is, the family. In fact, an increasing number of families, because they do not have

the time or for comfort, entrust to “mother-TV”, the burden and the pleasure of education.

Television operates not only to impose its agenda on society17 or to cultivate society18or to provoke

dependency, it goes further than this. Discussing the accumulated effects that the media

progressively have on human behaviour and thought, we need to recognise that they influence at a


cognitive level. In other words, the long-term effects of the medium must be emphasized, namely its

contribution in moulding the social processes of acquaintance. The power of the media is not only

limited to providing information on which to reflect, limiting in some way our acquaintance, but

also provides the cognitive categories that we absorb, from childhood, cultivating our systems of

mental and cultural elaboration of meaning. The media does not only dictate what we are to think

about but also how we are to think about these things. Not only do the media provide information,

but acting on a cognitive level, they structure and mould the social systems of acquaintance. The

media and television, in particular, influence our ability to think critically. Television, with its

dynamism, invites us to think in an equally fast way which is in contrast to times of critical thought.

Indeed, television is doomed by what Bourdieu calls the fast thinkers, “thinkers who think faster

than a speeding bullet fast”19. Television elaborates thoughts quickly and in a way that no-one can

because the thoughts are clichés. Television proposes its point of view to the public, who often

accepts it or thinks about it. As a consequence, the public are trained to think quickly and not

critically.

For the homo mediaticus, “thinking’s tiring”. He seems to be more and more “cognitive lazy”

and he is losing his critical abilities that, like other faculties, will atrophy if not trained. Kant, more

than two centuries ago, noted, we must have the courage to use our own intelligence, sapere aude,

in order that we do not remain intellectually “under-age”, subordinating ourselves to some spiritual

authority that thinks for us:

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why such a great part of mankind, long after

nature has set them free from the guidance of others (naturaliter maiorennes), still

gladly remain immature for life and why it is so easy for others to set themselves up as

guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book that has understanding for me,

a pastor who has a conscience for me, a doctor who judges my diet for me, and so forth,

surely I don’t need to trouble myself. I have no need to think, if only I can pay; others

will take over the tedious business for me20.


What Kant could not predict was the capillary spread of the media that, contemporaneously and in

every area, disseminates the same thoughts and ideas. This does not happen as a result of a

manifesto that declares it to be so, but in an automatic way. Indeed, the capitalist system, as all

systems, tries to self-perpetuate and defend itself. Critical thought, as mentioned, can be seen as a

threat; for this reason the system does not train us to think in this way. In other words, the system

does not encourage man to use his own intelligence and critical thought, since this could damage

and weaken the system. Thinking independently can mean, as Tocqueville has stated, a

conservation of the privileges of citizenship, but at the same time can make oneself feel foreign in

one’s own society21. It is for this reason that one often prefers to accept the more comfortable truth

that is simpler and less painful that is easier to digest and assimilate into the mental framework

supplied by the media and the culture of reference. This truth, or version of the truth, is preferred

because, as Arendt states, we cannot live without prejudgments. No one is so clever as to have

original thought every time the situation demands it of us. Such a lack of prejudgments would

demand superhuman vigilance. On one hand, it is true that we are not and we cannot be tabula rasa;

we do not have each time have to redefine the parameters of our basis of analysis, to estimate and to

elaborate the information from the social context. On the other hand, it is also true that the outlines

of perception and the instruments that we use as references for the world are given to us from the

social system. Arendt emphasizes that the less we have these prejudices the less we are suited to

living in a social context. Another issue is to see how these prejudgments are born, who carries

them, and how they influence our perceptions of the world.

As Silverstone and Hirsch note, media consumption engages interactive processes such as

incorporation, conversion, objectification and appropriation22. Furthermore a significant number of

studies consider the process of media consumption within the context of daily life23. Indeed, as has

been noted, the individual incorporates the media’s material which contributes to the formation of

himself24 . Moreover, as Wright Mills argues, “the biographies of men and women cannot be


understood without reference to the historical structures in which the milieux of their everyday lives

are organised”25. Thus, the question is: given the quasi-homogeneity of the media in every context

and the increasingly poor and ephemeral level of the media’s products, what type of formation is

offered to the tele-citizen?

The result of the media’s product, that encourages amusement and dogmatic thought, is a citizen

who is depoliticized and without a sense of responsibility. This kind of media system contributes to

form a citizen who prefers to reason based on easy stereotypes and slogans. Indeed, it is much more

easy and less laborious, to think in a passive way, to reason in clichés. Lippmann states that it is the

cognitive structure of the human who pushes to “see chiefly what our mind is already full of on

those subjects. There is an economy in this. For the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail,

rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the

question.”26

It is important to emphasize how these time and effort-saving stereotypes are created in our

minds. Often we prefer to use what others have thought for us. They give us the general lines on

which we are to reflect. This is the social role that opinion makers and opinion leaders carry out.

Often the propaganda that Carey calls “Treetops propaganda” comes directly from them27. They

directly influence the thoughts of their dependants and those under them. This seems to be more and

more true in a society, like ours, where the subdivision of jobs and of competences is raised to the

nth degree and in which there is an increasing dependency on experts to estimate and understand the

surrounding world. To quote Lippmann again:

The subtlest and most pervasive of all influences are those which create and maintain

the repertory of stereotypes. We are told about the world before we see it. We imagine

most things before we experience them. And those preconceptions, unless education

has made us acutely aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.…. But

there are uniformities sufficiently accurate, and the need of economizing attention is so


inevitable, that the abandonment of all stereotypes for a wholly innocent approach to

experience would impoverish human life28.

Moreover, the abuse of the mass media renders critical thought lazier, carrying it nearer to its

paralysis. The homo mediaticus does not want, and cannot always, in any case, go beyond the

superficial level of things, in order to discover what there is beyond that appearance. Indeed, not

everyone has the material and intellectual means to go beyond the ephemeral and pick at the deeper

nexus of things and to adopt another perspective from which or with which to see reality. In the

society of the ephemeral, the homo mediaticus prefers, by choice and necessity, not to go beyond

the iron curtain of television’s world.

The side of the world that disappears from our television and, consequently, we do not know

about, is becoming more vast. The world that we see is simpler. What has happened, since the

advent of television as the main instrument of information, is a change in the meaning of

information because according to Postman, television creates,

a species of information that might properly be called disinformation [... ]

Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information –

misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates

the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing29.

Television offers “light information” characterized by an insufficient depth of analysis. Moreover,

starting from Schultz’s sociology and extending the discussion by Berger and Luckmann30 on the

sociology of knowledge to the mass media, it is clear that the media also contribute to the

construction of truth. This is because the media construct symbols and pictures which people not

only think are true but which also serve to form their social and cognitive systems.31 However it is

the structure of the media in general and television, in particular, that superficializes and imposes a

simple format on the news. Using again Postman’s reflections; “embedded in the surrealistic frame

of the television news show is a theory of the anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that

abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction”32.


Television is a means of transmission of the banal because it is preoccupied more with the image

of the thing and not with its substance. The “force of banality” of television is argued in Bourdieu’s

test. He thinks that television is constituted of a language and symbology that is almost exclusively

superficial. The language of television creates homogeneity and does not leave space for divergent

ideas. The language and symbology of television are to be uncontroversial and “soft”, like a

weather report. What has happened in television has been extended to the print media that try to

discuss soft topics and issues that will not provoke any trouble.

The farther a paper extends its circulation, the more it favours such topics that interest

“everybody” and don’t raise problems. The object – news – is concentrated in

accordance with the perceptual categories of the receiver. The collective activity I’ve

described works so well precisely because of this homogenization, which smoothes

over things, bring them into line, and depoliticizes them. And it works even though,

strictly speaking, this activity is without a subject, that is, no one ever thought of or

wished for it as such33.

The problem of the conformism and banalization of the media, according to Bourdieu, is extending

into many other parts of society. In the case of television and its messages, apparently nobody

would want this banalization but it is what has happened. Furthermore, not only does it seem to be

unintentional, but someone draws profit whether directly or indirectly from this situation. This is

not to say that there is a controlling “invisible hand”. Indeed Bourdieu warns about simple and

superficial analyses that often accompany reflections on television and the wider media. This kind

of analysis does not examine the centre of the phenomenon and does not attempt to study all the

variables and dynamics at work.

Not only is the informative window that television opens on the world mediocre but it is

conceived as entertainment more than information. The infotainment entertains more than it informs,

spectacularizing the information and inviting us to reflect on gossip and the private lives of public

figures. It therefore slowly enters our daily lives. In our society pluralism seems to be merely


illusory, emptied of sense and importance. Using Marcuse’s concept of repressive tolerance, we can

say that people think themselves to be free but they are free to think only up to a point; they may

not criticise the current power structure.34

The position of the culture industry has been made, progressively, more clearly, imposing “the myth

of economic progress”, the intrinsic virtuosity of the market and technical progress as universal

remedies to all evils. The fundamentalism of the market and finance persuades politicians, diverting

them away from their political functions and rendering them mere civil employees serving the

market in way very similar to bureaucrats in totalitarian regimes. The mass market imposes

standardization and organization in the form of low quality stereotypes on the tastes and the needs

of the public. The human being is enslaved by market-induced passions which he considers to be

his own and only when they are satisfied will he be happy in his alienation. It coincides with the

qualitative deterioration of the mind and reduces the man to a simple accessory living of the

production process. This involves, as its more serious consequence, the impossibility of forming a

responsible and intelligent citizen, to the advantage of those who hold the reins and manage the

power that is, using Mills’s words, the power elite.35

In totalitarian societies the dominant class and the managing group exercise their power through

mass media, directly controlling public institutions and manifestations. Education, sport, free time:

all of it is directly organized according to one particular idea. The information is the voice of the

State. The journalists are members of the party and the variety of the media is limited. Today the

fear is the opposite: the media offers too much. A lot of this information is insignificant, useless,

and often repetitive. Topics such as fear and danger are very attractive to the media and often make

up a significant part of the stories having important political implications36.

Therefore the competition between the media is not only a pseudo-competition, because, as

Graber noted, the media are increasingly conformist replaying the same information and analysis

(Graber 1984: 80), but a sizeable part of the media seems conceived more in order to distract that in

order to inform and consequently form tele-citizens less and less well-informed and more distracted.


A distracted citizen is easier to train. The whole of Western media is preoccupied with the

ephemeral and entertainment, under market pressure37. As McChesney and Nichols point out as the

population and public opinion become effectively depoliticized as a result of a daily “infusion” of

meaningless news38.

Emerging here is one of the main contradictions of the “a-thought society”: on one hand more is

communicated, thanks to the spread of the mass media which technical and scientific progress has

rendered possible, but at the same time little is communicated. The communication becomes more

and more tautological. The enormous amount of voices that the mass media transmit daily, rather

than increasing the experiences and the acquaintanceship with the world, does not add anything

more, because such a type of communication is self-referential. This is because at the base of who

speaks and who listens is a progressively homogenous vision of the world. Both the panorama

offered by the media and the words used to describe it have become identical across the media

(Galimberti, 2004). In short, it only appears that more is communicated. The number of voices in

the media circle is more but the ideas that they are carrying is less and less. This is because the mass

media are owned and managed by only a minority of people. As Bagdikian notes, “nothing in

earlier history matches this corporate group’s power to penetrate the social landscape. Using both

old and new technology, by owning each other’s shares, engaging in joint ventures as partners, and

other forms of cooperation, this handful of giants has created what is, in effect, a new

communications cartel”39.

The “free market of ideas” is managed by fewer people who all have the same vision of the

world. Whoever has the power to manage this “market”, has the power to establish what is to be

known and what is to be discarded. As research shows, the media seek to satisfy the interests of

their advertisers, which are not necessarily coincident with the interests of the consumers40. More

strongly, the interests of the readers, viewers and listeners are satisfied only insofar as these are

coincident with the interests of the advertisers41.


John Keane states that there exists a structural contradiction between the freedom of

communication and the limitless freedom of the market since the latter tends to destroy the former.

Those who have a greater opportunity to access the mass media can more easily circulate their

opinions to the “free common citizens”.

Who controls the sphere of the market of the production and the distribution of the

information, determined also the priorities of the communication and the products (like

television books, reviews, newspapers, programs, software for the computers) that they

will be produced in mass and therefore their opinions will enter officially in mass and

to the inside of the free market of opinions42.

The concentration of the media in a few hands serves to testify that, in spite of there existence, a

plurality of television channels, newspapers, and radio stations; there are a reduced number of

opinions and ideas in circulation in the general population, forming public opinion. Media critics

claim that the commercial mass media corporations have become an antidemocratic force

supporting the status quo43. The mass media are an instrument of control different from those

dictatorial societies based on the physical control of the social context. To manage power today

means to have the ability to influence the virtual context, the place of production of the news and

meaning: that is the media’s world. It is here in fact that the power “speaks expressing itself like

authority”44, it is here that the production processes and the decisional strategies of the companies

are simulated and managed, but, above all, it is here that the entire social atmosphere is produced.

The acceptance of life-styles, values and ideas, that is the basis of the acceptance of the status

quo, is not only cross-sectional along political alignments, but is quasi-automatic, strengthening the

power. In other words, the media serve to reinforce the status quo and act as a form of rhetoric

support for the dominant ideology. The message of every advertisement is the same: equating

happiness with consumption. Before we learn to read we receive millions of these messages. This

contributes and forms the mental framework of the citizen of tomorrow. If the messages that the

school curriculum teaches to children are based on the consumerist system, on egoism and social


climbing, then it would not be strange when society moves in this direction. The mass media, and

the system that takes advantage of them, has a large responsibility in the anti-democratic drift of our

society. According to Dahlgren,

Media theory, as a specialty within social theory, has an obligation to help us better

understand not just the institutions of the media or the processes of communication,

even if these are central, but also fundamental features and processes of the modern

world, which is increasingly known to us via the media. This world, our societies, our

cultures, are not only in rapid transformation, but also in many ways in distress, a

reality that theory cannot ignore. The catalogue of ills is all too familiar and too long to

repeat here, but I would simply underscore the massive discrepancy between the current

states of suffering, deprivation and constraints on human freedom, and the potentials

inherent in the world for transcending to some degree these circumstances45.

It is the market and economic power that dictate the laws and delineate the directives in which the

military, politics and media must operate. It is the market that imposes its rules. Every day it

assumes more autonomy and independence, taking on human characteristics. Indeed, often the

information system describes the market as “nervous”, “tired”, and “happy” or uses sentences like

“it is the market that chooses”. Issues like deforestation, pollution, the exploitation of child labour

are decided by the market as if humans have no responsibility in it. The economy advances its

supremacy on politics. More strongly, the economy has absorbed politics, taking the leadership of

the society, in the name of pragmatism and realism with little protest.

The weakness of contemporary politics is to follow the globalization of the liberal market and

assume that this process is unstoppable and uncontrollable, thus favouring it. They exalt the

opportunities and the magnificent qualities of the spontaneity of an economy that alone will

guarantee well-being and prosperity. Politics abdicates its responsibilities to the economy. This is

the effect of the shattering force of la pensée unique (unique thought), propagandised through the

media of which Ignacio Ramonet speaks:


The transposition in ideological terms that pretend to be universal, of the interest of a

set of economic powers and those, specifically, of international capital…In the current

democracies, more and more free citizens feel enticed, trapped by a sort of viscous

doctrine which, insensitively, envelops all rebellious thought, inhibits it, confuses it,

paralyzes it and ultimately, suffocates it. This doctrine, la pensée unique, is the only

one authorised by an invisible and omnipresent “opinion police”46.

According to Ramonet social consent is constructed through the repetition of messages

disseminated by different opinion leaders, the culture industry, and the mass media. The reflections

of the many authoritative experts introduce only one vision of things, one that is politically correct,

one that does not upset anyone. The penseé unique is fundamentally based on the economy. The

financial market is accepted as an undisputed power. As Manuel Castells notes, “if globalisation is

widely acknowledged as a fundamental feature of our time, it is essentially because of the

emergence of global financial markets”47.

The “financial market” determines the development of a country. Trade agreements are

considered to be the basis of the process of democratization. This hegemonic process creates its

own institutions as it develops, from the G8 to the World Bank, from Hollywood’s myths to logos.

This process hits conventional political subjects and institutions, depriving the national

organisations of their ability to elect freely. Indeed, a State that accepts the directives imposed by

the great international organisations, does not place obstacles in the market but receives their laws

and as a result, is helped and supported, not only economically, but also diplomatically and

militarily. By contrast, those who oppose the organisations suffer political, economic and also often

military retaliations.

Those using critical thought who dissent and object to this system will have great trouble in

impacting upon the deep-rooted ideas of the homo mediaticus. This is not only because some

messages, as a result of the system of “filters”48, do not reach the general public, but also because

where they do arrive they would not have the same force of the messages that are repeated over and


over again and are, in time, absorbed. The new hegemony has now become a transnational force,

going beyond the “modern” borders of the State. As Beck points out, globalization is possible

because of the development of communication technology, creating a world society without a world

state and without a world government 49 . Moreover, Beck believes that globalization is

fundamentally about “de-nationalization”, suggesting that national systems are obsolete50.

The choices that influence our daily lives come from places we often ignore. Democracy is, in

some ways, emptied of meaning, persisting in appearance, but not in essence and substance. What

opportunities does the citizen have to participate in the choices regarding the economic politics of

their country, when it must be subject to the choices and impositions of organisations that are not

democratically elected?

It would be a mistake to concentrate analysis solely on the financial and economic factors of

globalization. In fact, globalisation extends beyond the economic field and into the cultural field.51

According to Featherstone, “the process of the homogenization of culture, the project of creating a

common culture, must be understood as a process in the unification of culture of the need to ignore,

or at best refine, synthesize and blend, local differences”52.

The principles that the “pensée unique” and the market impose, are those of total privatization,

liberalization, the dismantling of the welfare state, which was once considered to be a great

achievement in democratic countries but today is seen as an obstacle to progress and development

of the economy. Globalization is wide-ranging in our minds and hangs on what Petrella calls the

“Holy trinity”, that is the three principles of the “globalization of thought”: deregulation,

privatization and liberalization53. The obsessive repetition of these three principles slowly corrodes

the stronger resistances to this process. Concepts such as “a more flexible labour market”, “pension

reforms”, and “a strong currency” and so on, enter our daily language, like imperative and

unavoidable elements of government action. It seems that everybody “must accept” the principles

imposed by the market. Today, the dynamicity of the market seems to impose flexibility as an

irreplaceable and natural element of the normal run of things.


Irrespective of political party, the government must necessarily reform the labour market in order

to render it more flexible and to adapt it to a multinational purpose. To not accept this diktat

voluntarily means to go outside the important international circuit. For this reason, politics has

become the slave of the economy. Barthes, in his pioneering studies on publicity, has noted the

privileged place of ideology as situated in the discourse of the media. In fact, discursive structures

could be seen as conditions for a significant ideological impact.54 Such an ideological impact is due

to a false discursive representation of reality which is the origin of false conscience. Publicity is the

best means the system has to self-praise or, to use Schusdon’s words, “Advertising is capitalism’s

way of saying“I love you” to itself”55.

One of the more alarming elements of our society is the transplantation of social needs into

individual needs, the increasing search for luxury and comfort and transforming waste into need.

Our identity is created by consumerism by the “promotion of the self”56, “the perpetual recreation of

the self”57. and “our day-dreaming about consumption”58. As Bauman noted, in their “temples” the

“shoppers/consumers may find, moreover, what they zealously, yet in vain, seek outside: the

forthcoming feeling of belonging – the reassuring impression of being part of a community”59.

Furthermore, it is through consumption that individuals construct their sense of self and their sense

of society.

These rational aspects of irrationality, the imposition of false needs, perpetuate hard work,

aggressiveness and injustice, which is typical of late industrial society. The development and

satisfaction of these needs have a heteronomic character: it is imposed from the top. The needs of

the man coincide progressively with the needs of society which are imposed by the power elite.

Technology is able to penetrate inside the man, his inner space, slowly taking hold of his inner

freedom. This, as Marcuse emphasizes, has as its result not the adaptation of the individual with

society, but his mimesis, that is the immediate identification of the individual with his society.

In this process, the “inner” dimension of the mind in which opposition to the status quo

can take root is whittled down. The loss of this dimension, in which the power of


negative thinking - the critical power of Reason - is at home, is the ideological

counterpart to the very material process in which advanced industrial society silences

and reconciles the opposition60.

Our society is unconscious to the irrationality of the system. Whereas, before, the classist structure

was clear and did nothing to hide itself and therefore the opposition could identify and recognise

that they were being imposed upon, today, the “advanced industrial society” hides its classist

structure and, as a result, thereby causes a “Paralysis of Criticism”. Moreover, to paraphrase Mills,

with the increasing rationality of society and the moving of the centre of rationality and its control

from the individual to big organizations, we lose the possibility of reason for a large number of

people61.

Our society imposes myths and the cult of the Enlightenment, i.e. the manipulation and dominion

of nature. Adorno and Horkheimer have noted the self-destruction of the Enlightenment, that is the

destruction of the myth of scientific progress, of the dominion of man over nature, of technological

rationality. Now this instrumental reason, at the height of its development, demonstrates a

contradiction: the roles of man and science are inverted. “Enlightenment stands in the same

relationship to things as the dictator to human beings. He knows them to the extent that he can

manipulate them. The man of science knows things to the extent that he can make them. Their “in-

itself” becomes “for him”. In their transformation the essence of things is revealed as always the

same, a substrate of domination”62.

At the apex of its development, the Enlightenment’s principles and values are reversed: what we

create in order to serve us now enslaves us. In fact, man does not dominate science, science

dominates him. It is the social system that dominates the man, therefore, all men, even the

bourgeois who created modern society, become objects of society. The original aims are forgotten.

The rationalism of the Enlightenment is transformed into irrationality since its task is to free the

man compromised by the logic of the economic system which enslaves him: we are the instrument

of profit-making. Horkheimer and Adorno have analyzed the causes of this paradox, not in the


irrationality which is outside of reason, but inside the same reason. Indeed, it is rationality that has

generated, in a kind of short circuit, irrationality. For the sake of clarity, the reason of which they

speak is the reason of scientific positivism which uses reason as an instrument of dominion. The

critical rationality should be defended and developed and the media system seems unable to do this.

Man, therefore, is manipulated by the economic system. The culture industry presents itself as a

realization of the dreams of an illuminated society but at the same time limits rather than increases

our freedom as a result of the tide of messages, latent and obsessive, that imposes conformism.

Cultural impoverishment is synonymous with cultural levelling. It gives life to a homologation of

actions, that is, conformism, in which every action loses its autonomy and becomes part of the

structure and function of the apparatus, in synchrony with other actions. Collaboration with the

system is demanded of the individual.

Even if individuals believe they are able to escape, in their free time, to the rigid productive

mechanisms imposed by the late-industrialized society, what we are consuming is a copy of the

productive labour system. The culture industry tries to homogenize the individual and deprive him

of his essence and identity. It is for this reason that man is less and less free, since unconsciously he

is deprived of his true identity and is defrauded of his inner self. This is why man thinks he is freer

when, in fact, the opposite is true. The homo mediaticus, deceived by the culture industry which

every day extols the beauty of the consumerist society, is every day less free because his identity is

homologated to others.

*Direct correspondence to: Massimo Ragnedda [email protected]


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46. It is interesting to see that now the corporations, the principal cause of pollution in the world,

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47. Ignacio Ramonet, “La pensée unique” Le Monde diplomatique, January 1995 : 1

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49. Herman and Chomsky

50. Ulrich Beck, What Is Globalization? (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).

51. Ibid.

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Sage Publications, 1995), 86-101.

53. Featherstone 1995, 89.

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55. Roland Barthes, Mythologies (Paris: Seuil, 1970).

56. Michael Schudson, Advertising, the Uneasy Persuasion (New York: Basic Books, 1984)

232.

57. Andrew Wernick, Promotional culture: advertising, ideology and symbolic expression

(London: Sage, 1991).

58. Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (London: Sage Publications,

1991).

59. Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1987).

60. Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000) 99.

61. Herbert Marcuse One Dimensional Man (London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1964) 25-26.

62. Mills 1959, 187.

63. Horkheimer and Adorno, 6

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